All Blog Posts
Member blogs include thematic articles of 600-800 words on books or research by members, or human interest stories by members. To submit a thematic blog write to the relevant TG chair; for human interest blogs write to 1818society@wbgalumni.org, with “Blog Proposal” in the subject line.
| Title | Author | Publication Date | Content | Details |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bhutan: Land of the Thunder Dragon | Jianyuan Zhu | Jun 1, 2023 | Better to see something once than hear about it a thousand times. – Asian Proverb [caption id="attachment_14858" align="alignright" width="300"] Trongsa Dzong - the longest Dzong in Bhutan.[/caption] Dubbed as the... | Read More |
| Bhutan Trek 2023 – A Trekking Newbie’s Perspective | Heidi Hennrich-Hanson | May 22, 2023 | Patience is not the ability to wait, but the ability to keep a good attitude while waiting – Buddha quote [caption id="attachment_14815" align="alignleft" width="336"] Paro Dzong at night[/caption] After 3... | Read More |
| The U.S. Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 | Chas Feinstein | May 16, 2023 | Mark Twain famously said: “Everybody talks about the weather but nobody does anything about it.” As someone who has been following the glacial progress of climate change negotiations since 1991,... | Read More |
| A Tale of Two Microstates: Ideas for A Climate-Smart & Nutrition-Sensitive Future | Preeti S. Ahuja | Apr 27, 2023 | While the focus on the key purveyors of a changing climate is rightly increasing, it is important to keep in view simultaneously, the attendant issues besetting smaller states. Two such... | Read More |
| Lessons Learned from Life as a Consultant: Dealing with a Client who Refuses to Pay | Joe Barone | Apr 18, 2023 | When I left the Bank in March 2018, I decided to hang out my shingle as a consultant. Although the first nine months were filled with learning new things and... | Read More |
| Priorities for Action in the Face of Runaway Climate Change | Vinod Thomas | Apr 13, 2023 | Climate change presents an extreme gulf between scientific knowledge of the risk and policy action to tackle it. Technical solutions and economic policies are plentiful, in principle. What is lacking... | Read More |
| The Spiral Stairs | James Brown | Mar 1, 2023 | With the Boeing announcement of the last 747 rolling off the line in Everett Washington this week, I realized that it has been 50 years since this bird first entered... | Read More |
| Is Free Trade Dead? | Istvan Dobozi | Feb 8, 2023 | Free trade is one of the few economic paradigms that unite economists of all ideological and political stripes: reduction of international trade barriers – import duties and non-tariff barriers –... | Read More |
| How the Dollar-a-Day Poverty Line Came into Being | Lyn Squire | Jan 26, 2023 | Even after thirty years, there are still misconceptions about how the dollar-a-day standard used to measure poverty in the developing world came into being. Some, usually those critical of the... | Read More |
| A day with Pelé | John Muir | Jan 4, 2023 | [caption id="attachment_13427" align="alignright" width="341"] Washington Darts team 1970, NASL champions[/caption] The late 60’s had become a busy period for me. At the request of South American friends, I helped establish and... | Read More |
| Food Security, Poverty Reduction and Economic Transformation: Time for Sustained Action by G20 | Uma Lele | Dec 9, 2022 | In 2022, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen called on many occasions the need to strengthen global collaboration for tackling food insecurity, most notably at the G20 High-Level Seminar held in July... | Read More |
| 17 days Trekking the Tsum Valley and around the Manaslu in Nepal | Maryvonne Plessis-Fraissard | Dec 7, 2022 | The trip was planned for 2020 as a following chapter to the Annapurna Trek. In one of the many updates of the project, the Tsum Valley was added to provide... | Read More |
| WBG Retirees play a HUGE role in the Community Connections Campaign | Clare Evans | Dec 2, 2022 | I was born in Washington, DC, and I grew up in the DC metro area. I have loved and enjoyed this wonderful city and its people, culture, and institutions all... | Read More |
| Eating – and walking – our way around Türkiye | Lesley Shneier | Nov 15, 2022 | One morning before the crack of dawn, we stumbled bleary-eyed from our cave hotel, to be taken to the hot air balloon starting point in Cappadocia. The dark sky was... | Read More |
| Playing with atomic fire in Ukraine | Istvan Dobozi | Sep 30, 2022 | Ukraine has already experienced how dangerous a nuclear power plant can be. In 1986, the world's worst nuclear accident took place at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant (NPP) in Ukraine... | Read More |
| 1818 Northumberland Hike: July 29-August 5, 2022 | Sandra Hadler, Chair Florida Chapter | Sep 30, 2022 | Way back in July 2019, 30 some 1818 hikers and partners spent a week hiking in the Cotswolds. It was such a success, at the end of the week, the... | Read More |
| “Yes, We Can” | Dhamayanthy Padmanathan | Sep 30, 2022 | This is a verse from a very popular Girl Scout song ‘Yes, We Can’: “Can a woman be a doctor? Yes, she can. YES! She CAN! Can a woman drive... | Read More |
| Cherishing what matters the most…… | Tahseen Sayed | Sep 9, 2022 | [caption id="attachment_12227" align="alignright" width="278"] Author with PM Edi Rama[/caption] You land after almost 6 years at an airport and waiting at immigration, you know that you have come home! You... | Read More |
| Hiking the Iconic Vistas of Norway | Anis Dani | Sep 1, 2022 | It started off as a lark and ended as the trip of a lifetime. During a high altitude hike to Nepal and Tibet in 2019, our Norwegian colleague, Reidar Kvam,... | Read More |
| My trip to the Canadian Arctic Iqaluit, Nunavut, Canada | Alexander Keyserlingk | Sep 1, 2022 | Introduction I wanted to go north to see how people live in the northern part of the North American continent under such harsh conditions. Like many people, growing up, I... | Read More |